By Tony Winterburn • Published: 25 Apr 2020 • 8:34
NO more tourists are expected until the end of the year.
The central government in Madrid warned that tourism in the whole country would probably start again at the end of the year at the earliest. According to a forecast by the industry association, Mallorca, for example, will lose more than 95 per cent of tourism revenue this year due to the pandemic, and that’s a lot of money: €13.5 billion!
Germany’s favourite island in Spain has been particularly hard hit by the coronavirus. The tourism sector in the country as a whole threatens to lose a total of €124 billion.
Christophorus Heufken, who runs a small boutique hotel in Artà in the north of the island – far from Ballermann, made this statement: “In fact, we’re broke!” The 61-year-old German from the Ruhr area is pessimistic about the future. He fears that the uncertainty surrounding travel will continue to exist long after the exit restrictions and the opening of the border for foreigners.
The same applies to hotelier colleague Harald Strombeck, who has three hostels in the north of Mallorca with a total of 160 employees. “Nobody will travel again so quickly.” Because of the restrictions, for fear of infection and also because many people in Spain, Germany, and Great Britain will lack the necessary money due to the crisis and short-time work.
Major holiday organisers like TUI are somewhat more confident that operations in some holiday regions will be able to start again in the not too distant future. Like the Canary Islands and some Greek islands, the Balearic Islands are ‘relatively’ (?) unaffected by the corona pandemic, according to the world’s largest tourism group in Hanover.
TUI has said to customers that, given the current situation, they are already planning for 2021 – but that does not mean that they see nothing for 2020, and perhaps a slight recovery is conceivable in midsummer.
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